Irrationality
by Shinigami Mothman
Summary: Light doesn’t deal with the death of his best friend as easily as he thought he did. Best if read in the dark.


Are there maggots now?

He_ fell very slowly. Slower than he should. Or maybe his brain was working very fast whenever he saw it. _

_The acceleration due to gravity is 9.81 meters per second squared, but he looked as though he were moving much slower. Like time halted just for him to melt through the abysmally tortuous atmosphere._

Light shook those thoughts away and sat back on his computer chair. He scratched the back of his head and rubbed his eye sockets with the heels of his palms.

He died right here.

Well not here, but, in this area. The periphery near this very chair. Was he sitting in this chair? Was this the one that fell over?

No, idiot. Don't dwell on it. It's over now.

The man sighed and glanced at the clock at the corner of the computer screen.

"Hmm, it's 3 in the morning. It's probably a good idea to go to sleep, huh?" He chuckled. Asking a question directed at no one, but half expecting an answer. Though of course, there was nobody to hear it.

Now, there was no need to stay awake. He wasn't doing anything important, just flitting through the internet, tracing some more hard to reach criminals to write in the Death Note, since there were close to none still left in Japan. But for the last few hours, he wasn't doing anything really. Just sitting idle while he glanced at a few articles about Kira.

Sometimes he forgot who he was. Not in the sense of amnesia; but after reading and watching countless news reports on the analysis of Kira, the accounts from victims of criminals who were punished, and just random opinions--it seemed strange that he was the reason for all of it. Light Yagami at one point felt that Kira was just a separate entity, controlling and manifesting into something colossal and heavy, weighing upon the cerebrum of the _human_ man's psyche. But Light Yagami created Kira. He was Kira.

He told himself that Light Yagami ceased to exist. That he died along with the detective. Because it was _Light Yagami_, who made the promise to go with him. Kira ravished their souls, and took on its own form.

But if he was so ascended from humanity, why did he still have that _feeling_? The lingering, jarring, crawling feeling of chills creeping across his skin and vertebrae. First the atlas, then the axis, slowly along the cervical, then a deep quick decline through the thoracic region, and by the time it reached the lumbar it made him shiver. _Fear_ replicating by fission through his cauda equina and making his skin numb with cold. His mind was too clouded with trepidation to turn off the computer and look behind himself in the oppressive blackness behind him.

It was too paralyzing, he couldn't move his head.

_There was no fear eclipsing his eyes, but a fading light that was never acknowledged so strongly before. Then as he was about to hit the floor, Light caught him, but he didn't look scared. Even though he knew he wouldn't live another precious minute. His perception didn't glaze over, but remained dully methodical. But still working nonetheless, despite the slowing momentum of his thoughts. He didn't appear to be in pain at all._

_Until the end, his eyes kept staring until they finally shut. Finally closing over his exhausted soul. He was lucky he got to rest._

Light chewed on his thumbnail, contemplating whether he _really_ should go to bed now, and instead take a nap in the morning.

He pulled his hand slowly away from his mouth and stared at it for a full sixty seconds. Okay, yeah. He ought to get some sleep.

It took another few minutes of self convincing to finally log off. Only after that point did he realize he was stalling going to bed for no reason.

Why?

There was no sensible answer to that question. None that made the reality of his fears and situation anymore tolerable. Light wasn't the type to _dwell_. Though his thoughts couldn't keep themselves from hiding in the crevices of vivid memories to shield themselves from the face full of pitch darkness threatening to swallow everything in sight.

_When he finally closed his eyes to sleep forever, there seemed to be a change in his energy. It trickled quickly with the force of gravity out of Light's hands. Unable to sustain itself and permanently irreplaceable. Then it no longer looked like slumber, but something far more inconceivable. His jaw slackened and his body became abnormally limp._

Many minutes of standing still passed while the photos of the ill placed memory left Light unwilling to move.

He was already turned and staring at the darkness. But despite the airy blue light of the log in page, there was nothing at all visible beyond a perimeter of two meters around the computer. The shadows were massive--pushing down on the air around him and trying to squeeze everything into a single black hole.

The computer screen stayed luminous for a few trembling seconds longer. The man gripped the computer desk, but began to let go slowly so he could leave. Until the screen went black from the automatic sleep mode. Then there was nothing left to allow him the benefit of spatial acknowledgement, save the resolute obscure blackness moving yet still; all around him. Trapping him in a void that was unfathomable. Senselessly blind to his surroundings, the only futile lights that lit his consciousness were from the unforgiving conceptions of _then_.

_The skin on his face became a grayish pallor in a matter of seconds. The blood draining from his full, soft lips. The hand clutching Light's shirt held on for one more second in desperate instantaneous cadaveric rigor. Then every muscle decided to relax in one given moment. As well as the bowels._

There was no darkness different than if he closed his eyes or not. Whether he chose to walk with eyeballs nude or covered change nothing in his navigation ability. But he was cursed with no option but to search for his room with the sense of sight taken from him.

Once he managed to shuffle one foot at a time across the slippery linoleum floor, Light's hands outstretched. Feeling nothing but empty space--leading to no texture of resolution. No touch of a plaster wall to assert his sense of space, or that he was actually moving at all. Blindly striding slowly with no cognizance of what direction he was taking, he remained in the blackness for a few long agonizing minutes. Unable to discern the span of time in which it took him to move.

Even when he was so petrified, he didn't notice he just took three steps.

His breath shuddered, and he thought there was a noise. A sound just barely muffled under the blanketed noise of his sigh and the sound of his heart thudding in his ears. What… What was it?

He paused and held his breath.

Nothing.

It's probably the shinigami. The shinigami. Why are you panicking so much Light?

Then he noticed, the computer room was dustier than what he remembered.

Light's nose screwed and his right eye watered. He wanted to sneeze, but the fear entrapped him, and the stuffy tickling feeling in his nose was just at the very tip of breaking. But not quite.

"Ah…" He shook his head and shut his eyes. He buried his face in the crook of his elbow--his nose smushed against the antecubital fossa, and… that was it.

He sneezed hard into his arm, but the fabric shunted out most of the sound. But his body trembled at the force.

He sniffed and ran his hand over his face.

Do the dead sneeze?

Okay, now _that _thought was ridiculous.

Light almost chuckled at the idea, and that seemed to make the blackness he was walking through much more tolerable. Especially since he finally managed to find a familiar wall that he traced back to his room. Or at least, the room _they_ used to share.

Feeling the doorway to his room, Light opened the door and began unbuttoning his shirt and he slid it off and into one hand. He was kind of embarrassed at himself for being so scared earlier for no reason. How long had it been since he feared the dark? He was about 6 or 7, but it didn't last very long. Light was a very rational person, and had been so even in his early years of life. What should he be scared of? He should have been more afraid of getting an aneurysm from the sneeze than from the dark hallway. Ha! Him… scared… Funny.

His hand reached up and felt around for the light switch. With a flick of his finger, a flash of light erupted to fill the room with a fleeting burst of illumination--but slightly too bright than what it normally was. Until a millisecond later it was dark again.

Funny.

_Matsuda retched at the smell immediately. Though at first it didn't hit Light so suddenly as it did him, even though he was the one holding the body. He may have been preoccupied with his victory, but by that point, his enthusiasm died down and he wasn't smiling any longer. Just staring._

_The corpse was still warm, but… different. It was as though there was a _void_ in the place of the detective's solemn, but apparent countenance. It was as if it was so hollow, the body was trying to fill itself with him._

_Light stood up quickly and dropped the thing on the floor._

_It fell with a weighted 'thud', and one of the eyelids opened slightly enough to allow a glimpse of the white sclera of the eyeball. There was no character to this empty vessel. It was no entity but a strange shell that seemed to be a grotesque mirror to the once-detective. A negative. The positron to the electron. Within it was not the irreverent, eloquent person Light once knew, but a vortex with a vacuum center surrounded by macabre and dismal essence._

Light didn't notice his breath quicken once again. His eyes, fervent, darted around the room in hope for some source of illumination. But there was none. His shoulders rose and fell, along with the increased workings of his lungs. Breathing for more air. More and more air. Because dead bodies don't breathe, and he didn't want to become such a thing that became suffocated from its own lack of function. He liked breathing. As long as he was breathing, it was good.

Slowly, he made way for his bed. That of which seemed larger than what it should be. Perhaps it was the fact that he was the only person sleeping in it that night. He hadn't had a night like that in awhile.

Hunched and wide eyed, his hands found the foot of the mattress and he crawled slowly on it. Not unlike _him_ when back then, they'd both tuck in for a few blank hours of dreamless sleep. But at least there was the comfort of someone else experiencing the same things.

But no longer.

He kicked off his shoes and crept far enough to where he fell on his back, and his head hit a few soft pillows. But there was still that unnerving sense of trepidation gnawing at his cerebellum. Enough to where the blackness surrounding him became a womblike, but exposing entrapment that exploited the unintelligible sense of what _was_.

Shutting his eyes didn't help, but he did anyway. Hoping to fall into a doze quickly.

His eyelids scrunched tight, but that made it worse.

_The head of it turned when Soichiro lifted it slowly off the floor. The eyes didn't open, but Light knew that _it_ knew he was there. It was reading his mind and calculating the exact movements he would take. The words and lies he'd spill. The excuse to leave and hide his wicked schemes. It knew him. It was God, not him._

_Light's father added a little too much pressure and a desecrated belch ruptured from its vocal cords. In the back, Matsuda gagged again. But Light didn't want to stare at its sickening face. He was too preoccupied looking but not looking at the semi-erection the cadaver had. That was a commonality among the early post mortem males, but… it was as if it wanted him. Wanted him still, and would want him forever as a suspect, criminal, lover, enemy, and friend all in one. And that was how it was displaying it._

Nausea curled inside Light's belly and with a quivering hand, he wiped his cold, sweat-laden forehead. Stop. Stop it. Make it leave.

He was too terrified to budge, but he wanted so, so desperately to put his pillow over his ears before he heard that belch again. That was too much.

Tears welled up in his eyes and he clutched his hands over them, trying to drown out all.

Please. Please. Fall asleep. Please.

He was in Limbo for about thirty minutes until real slumber befell him.

_It laid on the bed before an ambulance came for it._

_Light stood in the doorway, unsure of whether to walk in or leave. But he couldn't take his eyes off of it. Was this what the Death Note really brought upon people?_

_For the first time, he saw what it really did up close. In bright, truthful light. In someone he knew and was at one point, very close to._

_He wasn't sure when he was standing over it. Just knew that he was. The eyeball was a little less masked than before, and still there was only whiteness underneath the eclipse of the eyelid._

_Light cocked his head and reached slowly toward it. Wanting to feel what _death_ felt like. Smell it. Taste it. Become it for one measly moment and he wasn't sure what he was doing. It was just happening. It was drawing him in. No one in the universe existed but him and _it_. And once his fingers were about to pry open the taunting eyelid. To look into death's eyes--_

_It sneezed._

Light awoke with a jump, shaking but his throat was too dry to scream. His heart was beating like he was having a heart attack. His head jerked around, and in utter horror, he saw two glowing red orbs across the room.

But his breath was the first to slow, as he suddenly got his composure. Then he squinted his eyes.

"Ryuk?"

"Hyuk hyuk, sorry pal. It's dusty in here."

As Light Yagami laid back on the pillows, trying to ignore the death god's incessant chuckles, vibrating the air, he questioned from that moment the irrationality of a human pretending to be God.


End file.
